Readers, I -- for one antiwar American -- am TIRED of being BEAT OVER the HEAD with "Support the Troops!" That is NOTHING MORE than a JINGOISTIC CONCOCTION by the Bush administration and its MSM war-promoters because THEY DO NOT SUPPORT the TROOPS!
Not when they are LITERALLY CLEANING UP SHIT WATER!!!!
And MY LANGUAGE is bad? Really??
I hope you are as OUTRAGED at the end of this piece as I was, readers!
"Thousands living in shoddy barracks"
Seriously, readers, WHERE has all that WAR LOOT GONE?!?
TRILLIONS of DOLLARS for WHAT?
It NEVER WENT to the TROOPS!!!!!
Not for health care, not for nuthin'!!!!!!!!!!
"by Kristin M. Hall, Associated Press | May 8, 2008
FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. - Specialist Kaila Colvin is looking forward to getting married for the usual reasons, and for one more particular to a soldier: not having to live in Fort Campbell's decrepit barracks anymore.
Specialist Loren Dauterman, who trained at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin last month with the National Guard, found something good to say about the falling-apart floors and ceilings in her quarters.
"It is better than sleeping out in the woods," Dauterman said last week, "but not a whole lot better."
Thousands of soldiers are assigned to barracks built for the GIs who served during World War II and the Korean War. The buildings are showing their age, and the soldiers are getting fed up.
Maybe there is hope yet for our country.
After a soldier's father posted a video on YouTube last month showing the dilapidated barracks for paratroopers at Fort Bragg, N.C., Defense Secretary Robert Gates called those conditions appalling and ordered base commanders to ensure their troops have proper quarters.
The commanders have their work cut out for them.
A spot check by Associated Press reporters over the past week found many barracks plagued by recurring problems with mold, mildew, and their plumbing and wiring.
Pick a service, pick a challenge, set yourself apart.... plunge a fucking shit pool!!!
That's the respect Bush and those criminals have for our troops.
Nothing but toy soldiers and props to these mass-murdering monsters!!!!
In many cases, the wooden, cramped, and outdated housing units were scheduled for destruction, but space and economic constraints from the war in Iraq have again filled the old barracks with soldiers.
Un-flippin-fucking-believable!!!
Yeah, they COULDN'T FIND any $$$$ to fix the barracks!!!
What, KBR et al steal it all?
Major installations like Fort Campbell and Fort Stewart, Ga., report pumping more than $100 million into barracks improvements in recent years to make room for the flood of recruits and brigades.
So who stole that $$$$? What private contractor did a shit job -- literally?
Army Secretary Pete Geren said yesterday at Fort Bragg that the Army has inspected 148,000 rooms at bases worldwide since officers saw the video about two weeks ago. Only eight soldiers needed to be moved to make repairs or renovations, he said.
Geren also said the Army took $248 million in emergency funds from other priorities to fix problems found by the inspections.
Nice to have a slush fund around to cover any purpose, 'eh, Americans?
Too bad you couldn't get your hands on that tax dough, huh, 'murkns?
You only got $600 bucks a piece!
"We ordered a look at literally every single room," Geren said. "We didn't find any looming danger to their health and safety."
And they would have found even less had the MSM ignored the man's video.
Still, military leaders concede that the housing situation as a whole is deplorable despite the millions spent over the decades to gut, retrofit, and renovate the old structures.
Translation: Either it was WASTED MONEY or SOMEONE STOLE IT!
At Fort Stewart the combination of a new combat brigade and ongoing construction has some soldiers sleeping and eating in large trailers until new barracks are built.
Hope they aren't formaldehyde trailers like the Katrina folks got.
Soldiers at Fort McCoy, a sprawling World War II-era base in western Wisconsin now used for short-term Guard and Reserve training, stay in two-story wooden barracks dating to 1942. Fewer than half of the 276 barracks have been renovated or modernized.
Guard Master Sergeant Patrick Robinson, 55, of Wausau, Wis., saw peeling paint, missing floor tiles, and clogged shower drains during his many training missions at the base. "You couldn't pay me to go into the shower rooms without shower shoes on," he said.
Clogged with you-know-what, readers!
A few years ago Robinson, 55, refused to sleep in the barracks after opening a window and getting dead flies blown onto his bed. In 2006, he returned from Iraq to moldy barracks he said looked like a "pigsty."
Hey, only the best for our brave fighting men! Support the Troops!!!!
Dauterman said she never complained about the Fort McCoy conditions. "We are in the Army and we accept many things about it. We are just accustomed to it," she said.
Sig Heil!
The Wisconsin Guard soldiers' commander, Colonel Hillis Tinglum, said the barracks are acceptable given the short nature of training stays there. Compared with the conditions soldiers encounter in the Middle East, "We have nothing to complain about in staying in barracks like these," Tinglum said.
Oh, God, we have sent them to hell hole!
In 1994, the Army launched a barracks modernization program to replace all its oldest housing. Brigadier General Dennis Rogers, who is responsible for maintaining Army housing, said last week that besides poor physical condition, the old barracks offer too little privacy to meet the expectations of today's younger generation.
It was a frequent complaint from soldiers who were interviewed.
"Privacy-wise, you can't hide anything," Colvin said. "It's definitely cramped."
About a third of Fort Campbell's single soldier barracks - serving some 3,300 soldiers - house two soldiers to a room. The 46 soldiers on each floor have to share two large bathroom facilities.
"It's kind of a pain," Colvin said. "There are only four showerheads in the bathroom."
Other soldiers are bothered by the buildup of grime.
Private Chris Daugherty, a Guardsman from Shreveport, La., says no amount of cleaning could keep his Fort Knox barracks spotless.
"It was cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, but no matter how much you clean, the barracks have been used by so many privates that as far as the air ducts and the air systems, you can't get it totally clean," said Daugherty, who just completed combined basic training and advanced individual training.
The base is replacing heating and air conditioning systems to decrease mold in showers and living quarters.
One wonders what took so long.
The Army aims to have new or renovated barracks housing for 147,700 enlisted soldiers within five years, according to Ned Christensen, chief of public affairs for the Army Installation Management Command. The Army doesn't have a total for all its barracks spending, but Christensen estimated that between 2004 and 2013, the construction cost for new barracks complexes will amount to $10.7 billion.
Maybe we ought to rein in the Empire's War Machine and save all that money, no?
The Pentagon also gives troops more financial incentive to rent or buy housing in communities near their base rather than stay on base. Monthly allowances that vary according to a soldier's location, rank, and dependents have been increased substantially in recent years.
But for those living on base, the conditions can be grim.
Ed Frawley, who shot the video of the Fort Bragg barracks after his son, Sergeant Jeff Frawley, came back from Afghanistan, said his son had lived in those barracks since he joined the Army in 2004. The Army said the younger Frawley isn't talking to reporters.
"He said it was depressing," the father said, "because you work all day and then you have to go back to these barracks."But Support the Troops!!!! You outraged, readers?
Where has all that war loot gone -- other than War Profiteer Coffers?
